AT&T shifts to wireless focus with new ads and color

To those who think the Apple iPhone is just a clever way for AT&T (T) to grab wireless market share — think again.

AT&T's new chairman and CEO, Randall Stephenson, says the iPhone is just one part of a multipronged global strategy to turn AT&T into a "mobility" play. That's Stephenson-speak for any type communication anywhere, anytime.

"Wireless is the core of the business now," Stephenson says. "It's the core of how we grow the business going forward."

To help drive that message home, AT&T today kicks off an advertising campaign that will underscore the company's new, mobility-centric view of life. The tagline: Your Seamless World.

AT&T is also introducing a new company color for its mobility services: orange.

The choice is a respectful nod to Cingular, whose corporate color was orange. That brand was retired after AT&T bought its Cingular partner, BellSouth. The combined wireless operation now goes by one name: AT&T.

The blue-and-white sphere — AT&T's corporate logo — will not change.

Like his predecessor, Edward Whitacre Jr., who oversaw the transformation of AT&T into a wireless power, Stephenson says he won't be shy about shaking up the status quo.

For years, he notes, big carriers have forced U.S. consumers to buy traditional phone service if they wanted the best deal on broadband and wireless services.

Those days are over, he says.

"We're freeing our broadband customers from having to buy an access line (regular phone service)," he says. Such an approach "is an old mind-set. We need to get over it."

He says a handful of AT&T wireless stores recently began test-marketing a bundle of just wireless and home broadband services.

The $60-a-month package offers customers a 1.5-megabit home DSL connection, 450 anytime wireless minutes, plus 5,000 night and weekend minutes, unlimited calls to AT&T customers and rollover of unused minutes to the next month. Five bucks more gets 200 text messages.

In a first for AT&T, however, customers do not have to buy regular phone service to get the package price.

Stephenson says the response from consumers has been overwhelming. Sales "have jumped."

As a result, Stephenson says, AT&T plans to start selling the package nationally. "We'll blow this out over our entire footprint."

Inherent in the offering, he says, is a message for consumers — and a message for AT&T's workforce. "We're not going to force customers into (a service) they don't want to use."

Stephenson says the iPhone, distributed exclusively by AT&T, has met the company's expectations. The only surprise, he says, is the impact on data usage by iPhone owners. It's double what AT&T had expected, and more than half of that usage is taking place at Wi-Fi hotspots, he says.

Stephenson says he supports Apple's decision to cut the iPhone's price by $200, noting that it should boost sales during the upcoming holiday season. He also thinks the $100 credit offered by Apple to those who paid the original retail price of $599 was "respectful of customers."

The impact of the device on AT&T is undeniable, he says. In India recently to talk with large-business customers about AT&T's product offerings, Stephenson says the first question was one that is becoming increasingly familiar to him: "Do you have an iPhone?" (He does.)

AT&T is beefing up its global profile and trying to cut better "roaming" deals with international wireless carriers to carry calls from iPhones and its other devices.

"We pretty much cover the globe now," Stephenson says. "We just want to cover it cheaper."

Source : www.usatoday.com

Google taps Capgemini to bring big business to Apps

Global consulting firm Capgemini believes that GoogleApps--Google's online alternative to Microsoft Office--appeals to more than college students and small businesses.

The two companies on Monday are expected to announce a partnership under which Capgemini will offer desktop support and installation services to large corporations that use Google Apps Premier Edition.

Google Apps--which includes Web-based Gmail, a calendar, and document editor--can fill a role in large corporations even though the product suite is used mainly by individuals and small businesses, according to Capgemini executives.

These Web-based applications make sense for employees who typically don't have their own PCs, such as factory line or retail workers, where the cost of a PC and Microsoft Office is hard to justify, said Steve Jones, head of SOA (services-oriented architecture) at Capgemini.

The Google suite also makes sense for people collaborating over the Internet with business partners, he added.

Capgemini will provide support to corporations and customize Google Apps to fit a company's business processes.

For Google, the arrangement helps Google Apps' entry into large corporations, which tend to be conservative about new technology adoption.

A report published last month by research firm the Burton Group argued that corporations that use Google Apps Premier Edition are taking risks, even though the product is relatively inexpensive at $50 per user per year.

Most corporations are not experienced in getting productivity applications delivered over the Web from Google, which is primarily a consumer company. The applications themselves lack features that Microsoft Office has, such as the ability to access documents based on an employee's role, the report noted.

"While the $50 per user per year price point is attractive, enterprises are not getting a lot for their money," wrote Burton Group analyst Guy Creese.

"While Google's entrance is adding momentum to using software as a service (SaaS) for communication, collaboration, and content management, it's unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating," he added.

Capgemini's Jones said that Capgemini decided to offer a Google Apps service in part because employees often use the applications without the approval of corporate technology departments, which can lead to problems managing important company documents.

"If companies don't proactively control this, then they will lose control. This is going to happen no matter what. The question is whether you enable it or not," he said.

Source : news.com.com

Weather May Account for Reduced Honey Crop

That the 2007 honey crop has been disappointing won't surprise anyone who has picked up the newspaper in recent months. Since early spring, colony collapse disorder (CCD), a disease that causeshoneybees to suddenly, mysteriously disappear from their hives, has made headlines around the world. Without honeybees to pollinate, experts warn that one-third of the food supply -- from apples and peaches to cucumbers and squash -- is at risk.

It's a frightening prospect. And though signs of CCD were first reported in the United States and most cases have been reported here, European beekeepers have recently observed a similar phenomenon, and possible cases have been reported in Taiwan.

Scientists and beekeepers have floated a variety of theories for the collapses -- from stress caused when commercial beekeepers move their hives long distances to disorientation caused by cellphone radiation. Last week, the journal Science published a report that found a new virus, Israeli acute paralysis virus, appeared to be associated with CCD.

But some experts say the more likely reason for this year's weak honey crop, which the NationalHoney Board says is on track to be smaller than last year's below-par 155 million pounds, is something much more obvious: the weather. In the South, drought and wildfires have prevented flowers from blooming. In the Midwest, a late freeze brought nectar flows in many areas almost to a halt. And in California, the country's No. 2 honey producer, coastal beekeepers reported that there were almost no flowering plants in July. The bees were fed sugar water to keep them from starving.

"It's more weather than CCD," said Ted Dennard, president of the Savannah Bee Company, which sells specialty honeys. "The reports I'm getting is that everywhere is under-producing. Tupelo was somewhere between 25 percent and 50 percent of normal production, and there's not a drop of star thistle in Idaho."

Extreme weather is becoming increasingly common across the globe, numerous studies suggest. That's why new research by Wayne Esaias, a Maryland biological oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who keeps bees as a hobby, has piqued enormous interest among bee experts and honey lovers. By taking simple measurements on when his bees started and stopped collecting nectar near his home in Highland, Esaias has shown that flowers there are blooming three weeks earlier than they did in 1992 and a month before they did in 1970. (The research, which has not yet been published, is posted at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sites/regional_map.htm.)

Even with a limited data set, it's a potentially significant climate shift. If backyard beekeepers collected similar data at sites across the country, the results could offer clues about how to manage bee colonies to maximize honey production and, potentially, help keep bees healthy enough to resist diseases, such as the mysterious CCD.

"What this has demonstrated is that with simple measurements, you can bring all the information together and get a sense of the bigger picture," said Dewey Caron, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware. "I'm kind of ashamed I didn't think of it first."

Esaias, though, is the first to admit that it took him a long time -- 15 years -- to see that there might be a useful connection between his professional knowledge of weather and climate and his after-work beekeeping hobby.

It all started in 1991 when, without asking permission, his 12-year-old son offered to make a home for the hives of his Boy Scout troop leader, who was leaving the area. Along with the hives, the Esaias family inherited an old platform scale. At the troop leader's instruction, Esaias placed the hives on the scale in the back yard.

Each night in honey season, they would record the hives' weight. The heavier the hive, the more nectar had been collected. "I'd never kept bees before, so it was a good management tool," Esaias remembered. "It helped you figure out when to get ready for the honey and when to take the honey off."

His two children became avid beekeepers, keeping records for their 4-H club and selling honey out the back door. Over the years, Esaias, who today has 17 hives, noticed that the bees behaved differently during El Ni?o years, when the winter is milder and the summers are wetter.

In early 2006, Esaias decided to look for patterns. He dug up spotty records from 1922, 1923 and 1957 on when flowers first bloomed in the Washington area, and good, consistent ones from the Smithsonian beginning in 1970. His analysis showed that the plants were blooming a full month earlier now than they had been in 1970. There had been no apparent change between 1922 and 1970.

Esaias stresses that real climate analysis requires long, continuous records, so it's possible this is normal weather variability. But his hypothesis is that the change is the result of the area's rapid urbanization. As more buildings and roads are built, the temperature climbs and plants bloom earlier.

This spring, he enlisted the help of 15 other beekeepers in Washington and in the Maryland suburbs. Initial results show a 15-day gap between nectar production in Chevy Chase and 20 miles away in Highland.

"There's a lot of variability within the natural system. The scary part is the long-term trend and the implications of that change," Esaias said.

To find out what that might be, Esaias has applied for NASA funding that would allow him to overlay his data with information from NASA satellites that chart weather and vegetation patterns.

"Bees are such great environmental samplers. When they go out and forage, they go almost two miles away from the hive. That's a very large area, about 2,500 acres, and the same size as the grid elements of a lot of climate ecosystem models," Esaias said. "I'm wondering if there's a way we could look at when the plants produce nectar, and use the satellite data and ecosystem models so we're in a better position to understand how climate change will affect pollination."

So are other entomologists, such as Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California at Davis. Mussen believes the reason bees got "whacked" by CCD is malnutrition, which is directly connected to the weather. If honeybees cannot collect enough nectar to feed themselves, they won't have the strength to resist disease.

"If we're headed into rougher weather, as it appears we are, we'll have more difficulties with our bees," Mussen said. "It won't matter if you're a backyard beekeeper or someone with 10,000 colonies."

Both types of beekeepers will have the opportunity to contribute if Esaias's research moves forward.

"This is a perfect example of how citizen science can work," said the University of Delaware's Caron. "Lots of people can come in and contribute small amounts of data. You get immediate feedback on your bees and the satisfaction that you are contributing to a larger picture."

By Jane Black

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 10, 2007; Page A05


Source : www.washingtonpost.com

AMD's Barcelona not a savior, yet

Advanced Micro Devices' quad-core Opteron processor is finally ready, but it's far from clear that this is the product that will help right AMD's ship.

AMD CEO Hector Ruiz will formally unveil the quad-core Opteron chip, previously code-named Barcelona, during an event in San Francisco Monday evening. Over a year in the making, and six months later than expected, Barcelona will be AMD's first chip with four processing cores.

High Impact

What's new:

After a delay, AMD is formally unveiling its quad-core Opteron chip, previously code-named Barcelona, during an event in San Francisco.

Bottom line:

The four major server vendors all plan to use Barcelona in their servers, and AMD thinks it can court new customers. But it appears that Barcelona is far from the smash hit that the company once hoped it had with its "native" quad-core design.

Intel has had quad-core chips for servers since last November. The company chose an easier-to-implement method of putting four processing cores together by simply packaging two dual-core chips together. AMD took a different approach, integrating all four cores onto a single chip, with the belief that having all four cores together was a better fit for its architecture.

Will that insistence on a specific design goal make a difference? In some ways, it already has.

AMD has been forced to severely discount server processor prices this year to compete against Intel's quad-core chips, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The company's sales force is in the middle of a reorganization following the departure of its top two sales executives. And because of Barcelona's delay, caused by technical glitches brought on by its challenging design, Ruiz will introduce Barcelona about 10 weeks before Intel's launches its second-generation quad-core server processor. The initial reviews have yet to surface, but it seems AMD might be able to stop the bleeding with Barcelona. The four major server vendors in the world--Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems--all plan to use Barcelona in their servers. And AMD thinks it can court new customers by emphasizing a different metric for measuring power consumption in data centers.

But AMD will not deliver--at least not yet--on promises made by Randy Allen, corporate vice president of AMD's server and workstation division, in January. "We expect across a wide variety of workloads for Barcelona to outperform Clovertown by 40 percent," Allen said. In May, Allen told reporters that Barcelona "will be the highest-performing x86 chip out there. It will blow away Clovertown."

There was no proof to those statements in the test results AMD distributed ahead of the Barcelona launch. In its briefing materials, the company touted only benchmark results that emphasized floating-point performance and memory bandwidth, which have always been strengths of the Opteron processor but do not cover the entire spectrum of the server market. And even among those benchmarks, Barcelona outperformed Intel's Xeon X5345 processor by more than 40 percent on only three criteria.

Barcelona will arrive in three different categories for high-performance, standard-issue, and energy-efficient server models. The high-performance models won't be available until the fourth quarter, but two standard and three energy efficient processors are now available for two-socket servers, the dominant segment of the market. Two processors for four-socket servers in both the standard and energy-efficient categories also will be available.

"ACP is meant to be the best real-world end-user estimate of what they are likely to see from the power consumption on the processor."

--Bruce Shaw, director of server and workstation marketing, AMD

In the standard category, AMD will launch processors at 2GHz and 1.9GHz, costing $389 and $319, respectively. The energy-efficient Opterons will launch at 1.9GHz, 1.8GHz and 1.7GHz.

That's slower than some had expected from Barcelona, and could have something to do with the company's earlier projections for Barcelona's performance against Intel. When "technical glitches" arise in processor production, they are often solved by running the chip at slower clock speeds until the problems can be ironed out.

AMD plans to launch 2.3GHz high-performance versions in the fourth quarter and will likely boost clock speed as momentum starts to grow behind the chip. The company demonstrated a 3GHz Barcelona chip at its analyst day in July. Clock speed is by no means the only measure of processor performance, but it is an important measure.

As a result, AMD will initially market its chips in part by using a new metric it developed for measuring the average power consumed by its processors. Power consumption has become a huge issue for companies looking to build large data centers. It's increasingly more expensive to provide electricity and cooling to data centers than it is to buy the servers themselves, forcing the chip and server industries to work on building more energy-efficient products.

But AMD customers who relied on the company's previous power metric of TDP (thermal design power) were putting too many resources into cooling and electrical supply, said Bruce Shaw, director of server and workstation marketing for AMD. That's because TDP was developed so server manufacturers would know much power the chip consumes in worst-case maximum-power situations that very rarely occur, and design their systems accordingly, he said.

So now AMD will advise customers of an Opteron processor's average CPU (central processing unit) power, or ACP. "ACP is meant to be the best real-world end-user estimate of what they are likely to see from the power consumption on the processor," Shaw said.

This will give customers a better sense of how they should plan for the power consumed by Opteron servers, Shaw said. AMD still plans to publish TDP ratings that are important to server designers, but will direct customers to the ACP figure, which has the added bonus of being significantly lower than TDP.

AMD says it won't use the ACP number to compare the power consumption of its processors against Intel's. AMD is publishing the methodology behind the ACP metric, but Shaw said the company won't rate Intel's processors by using the metric for comparison purposes. Still, it is touting average CPU power of 55 watts for the energy-efficient Barcelona models and 75 watts for the standard models, which could confuse some customers for investors used to TDP comparisons.

Power consumption marketing is the new battleground for Intel and AMD, and it can be a minefield when trying to make a purchase decision, given the different implementations each company uses. But AMD does appear to have some advantages over Intel in pure energy efficiency, according to independent tests by Neal Nelson and Associates and demonstrations performed by AMD during its most recent analyst day, which could help it gain traction in the growing blade-server market.

That's good, because marketing its chips on pure performance is no longer a possibility for AMD. After years of touting the superior performance of its dual-core Opteron chips against Intel's dual-core Xeon processors, AMD's clear advantage ended with the launch of Intel's Core microarchitecture processors in June last year. Although Opteron still does well against Xeon on certain workloads that demand excellent floating-point performance or memory bandwidth, it's no longer the undisputed winner that it once was.

And it doesn't appear that Barcelona leapfrogs Intel's current quad-core chips to the degree predicted by Allen in January. The quad-core Opteron outdoes Intel by 35 percent on the SPECfp_rate2006 benchmark, a test of floating-point performance administered by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) that's long been an Opteron strongpoint and is generally a metric eyed by those with high-performance computing needs, such as labs and research institutions.

But AMD didn't provide specific numbers for SPECint_rate, a measure of integer-processing speed that relates more directly than SPECfp_rate to business-computing tasks such as e-mail or database transactions. However, according to published scores and AMD's performance estimates, Barcelona appears to trail Intel's current Xeon chips by a significant margin. AMD said the two-socket edition of Barcelona would be 55 percent faster on SPECint_rate2006 than its current dual-core Opteron chips, which received a score of 56.8. That would put Barcelona at around 88, much slower than the published results for Intel's two-socket quad-core Xeon chips running at 3GHz, which received a score of 116.

AMD uses an old benchmark, SPECompM2001 base, in another comparison. The other benchmarks touted by AMD will delight high-performance computing customers but aren't as relevant for the corporate market. The new Opteron does well on the Fluent and LSDYNA benchmarks that emphasize floating-point performance and memory bandwith.

Those aren't the types of applications that crop up more often for most business customers, and AMD doesn't cite any application-specific benchmarks that crop up more frequently, such as tests of Java performance database-driven financial software from SAP.

One strong suit that AMD can point to is virtualization technology, which is becoming increasingly important to server customers. The performance of VMware's software will be 79 percent better on AMD's quad-core Opteron compared with the previous generation, according to AMD. The company built several hooks into Barcelona that were designed to improve virtualization performance.

But it appears that Barcelona is far from the smash hit that AMD once hoped it had with its "native" quad-core design. And Intel has new quad-core chips in the offing around mid-November, with a dramatic overhaul expected next year to mimic many of AMD's design features that made Opteron a winner in the past.

AMD's best hope is to get Barcelona's clock speeds up to higher levels as quickly as possible, which could unlock the advantages of putting all the cores on the same processor die. One disadvantage of Intel's implementation is that signals have to leave one dual-core chip to visit the other, and that takes time.

Barcelona is expected to be available in servers from two of AMD's server partners on Monday, and in a few weeks from the others. It likely won't add too much revenue to AMD's coffers until the fourth quarter, meaning the company could be in for another rough patch until Barcelona reaches a wider portion of the market.

CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

Cource : news.com.com

Apple: You can gab on that iPhone for eight hours

According to Apple, you can ditch your fears over the rumor that the iPhone has 45 minutes of talk time. The company announced Monday that the much-anticipated handset will ship with much better battery life than was expected when it was first announced in January. The iPhone will finally be released, as you probably already know, on Friday June 29.

The numbers from Apple? The company had initially anticipated that the iPhone battery would allow five hours of talk time (though rumors around the blogosphere suggested it was actually much less than that), but now Apple is boasting that it'll last a full eight hours with a whopping 250 hours of standby time. Apple is also saying that you'll alternately be able to enjoy six hours of Internet use, seven hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback. That's twice as long as the ultra-efficient iPod Shuffle.

A comparison chart from Apple pitting the iPhone against its rivals.

(Credit: Apple)

Additionally, the touch-screen of the iPhone has been upgraded from plastic to optical glass to make it clearer and more scratch-proof. So, with that and the extended battery life, maybe you can take your iPhone on wilderness excursions.

UPDATE at 10:12 a.m. PDT: Whoops! There was an error in Apple's original competitive data chart (above, corrected). The original chart said that the Nokia N95 did not have Wi-Fi capabilities. It, in fact, does.

Source : news.com.com

2 U.S. astronauts take 4th spacewalk

HOUSTON — Restoration of a failed computer system returned life to a regular rhythm on the international space station Sunday, as two astronauts took the fourth spacewalk since space shuttle Atlantis docked with the outpost a week ago.

"We're slowly moving back into a normal mode of operations," station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin radioed Mission Control in Moscow.

The "normal mode" included the last spacewalk of the mission, a previously unscheduled fourth trip outside the space station to finish up tasks originally scheduled for last Friday's third spacewalk. Astronauts on the third spacewalk had the unplanned job of repairing a thermal blanket which had peeled back near Atlantis' tail during the June 8 launch.

The spacewalk started at 12:25 p.m. EDT Sunday as the space station orbited 220 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.

The top priority for the spacewalkers, Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson, was activating a rotating joint on the outpost's newest segment, allowing a new pair of solar wings to track the sun and provide power to the station. The solar arrays were delivered to the space station by Atlantis, which arrived at the outpost a week ago.

The astronauts also set up a new camera stanchion outside the station's newest segment and planned to install a debris shield and a computer network cable between the United States and Russian sides of the space station during the planned 6 1/2-hour spacewalk.

At the end of the day, flight controllers on the ground planned to give the rotating joint a small test by moving it 5 degrees. A more thorough test to see if the solar arrays track the sun was in store on Monday.

Flight controllers on Monday planned to test the space station's thrusters, which haven't been used since the crash last week of the Russian computers which control orientation and oxygen production.

Yurchikhin and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov got four of the six computer processors operating again on Friday. The remaining two were brought back online on Saturday but then flipped back off to be "in cold standby mode" so that they could be used if needed.

"We can report that things are still improving," said flight director Holly Ridings.

With the exception of an oxygen generator, all of the space station systems that were powered down when the computers failed were back running.

Mission managers will decide after the station's thrusters are put to the test whether Atlantis needs to spend another day at the outpost. During the computer meltdown, Atlantis' thrusters were used to help the station maintain its orientation.

Atlantis is set to undock on Tuesday and land Thursday in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"We're going to give it a checkout," Ridings said. "We'll make sure the computers are still talking to the thrusters and prove to ourselves that we've got everything we need in order to undock safely."

While the seven-member crew of Atlantis and the three-man crew of the space station spent Father's Day 220 miles above Earth, the holiday didn't slip the minds of the nine fathers at the outpost who collectively have 24 children.

"Happy Father's Day to everybody downstairs," said U.S. astronaut Clay Anderson.

Source : www.chron.com

No fix yet for space station computers

HOUSTON — NASA has no problem leaving an astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on the limping international space station despite a serious computer meltdown, a U.S. space agency official said Friday.

"I think we're in good shape. We've still got a lot of options to work through," space station program manager Michael Suffredini said in an afternoon briefing.

He said there was no urgency now that would require the crew of the orbiting outpost to come home. "We have plenty of (oxygen) gas to keep the crew on orbit for some time," Suffredini said.

He refused to speculate about prospects long-term if the computers aren't back in service.

Meanwhile, two astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis, which arrived one week ago to continue construction work on the space station, began a spacewalk with two assignments: to disconnect a connector on a newly installed power-conducting truss that is a key suspect in the computer glitch, and repair a torn thermal blanket that helps protect the shuttle from heat on its return flight to Earth next week.

NASA suspects the connector because the Russian computers blinked out at about the same time the connector went on line. The connector isn't required for station operations until a later power hook-up, Suffredini said.

"It's circumstantial,' he said. "We don't know if that's the cause."




Source : www.chron.com

Designer bug holds key to endless fuel

THE US scientist who cracked the human genome is poised to create the world's first man-made species, a synthetic microbe that could lead to an endless supply of biofuel.

Craig Venter has applied for a patent at more than 100 national offices to make a bacterium from laboratory-made DNA.

It is part of an effort to create designer bugs to manufacture hydrogen and biofuels, as well as absorb carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases.

DNA contains the instructions to make the proteins that build and run an organism.

The J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is applying for worldwide patents on what it refers to as Mycoplasma laboratorium based on DNA assembled by scientists. When asked whether the world's first synthetic bug was thriving in a test tube, Dr Venter said: "We are getting close."

The Venter Institute's US Patent application claims exclusive ownership of a set of essential genes and a synthetic "free-living organism that can grow and replicate" that is made using those genes. To create the synthetic organism his team is making snippets of DNA, known as oligonucleotides or "oligos", of up to 100 letters of DNA.

To build a primitive bug, with about 500 genes in half a million letters of DNA, Dr Venter's team is stitching together blocks of 50 or so letters, then growing them in the gut bug E. coli. Then they turn these many small pieces into a handful of bigger ones until eventually two pieces can be assembled into the circular genome of the new life form.

The synthetic DNA will be added to a test tube of bacteria and the team hopes that one or more microbes starts moving, metabolising and multiplying.

The Canadian ETC Group, which tracks developments in biotechnology, believes that this development is more significant than the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago.

On Wednesday, ETC spokesman Jim Thomas called on the world's patent offices to reject the applications. He said: "These monopoly claims signal the start of a high-stakes commercial race to synthesise and privatise synthetic life forms. Will Venter's company become the 'Microbesoft' of synthetic biology?"

A colleague, Pat Mooney, said: "For the first time, God has competition. Venter and his colleagues have breached a societal boundary, and the public hasn't even had a chance to debate the far-reaching social, ethical and environmental implications of synthetic life."

However, Dr Venter did ask a panel of experts to examine the implications of creating synthetic life. His institute convened a bioethics committee to see if its plans were likely to raise objections.

The committee had no objections but pointed out that scientists must take responsibility for any impact their new organisms had if they got out of the lab. The organisms can be designed to die as soon as they leave laboratory conditions.

Dr Venter announced the project to build a synthetic life form in 2002. In theory, by adding functionalised synthetic DNA, the bacterium could be instructed to produce plastics, drugs or fuels.

Dr Venter's institute claims that its stripped-down microbe could be the key to cheap energy production. The patent application claims an organism that can make either hydrogen or ethanol for industrial fuels.

Source : www.theage.com.au

Patchy day for shuttle

A PATCHED-UP Atlantis blasted off yesterday morning with seven astronauts on the first Space Shuttle flight of the year.

It put NASA back on course after a run of bad luck and various difficulties.

Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said foam had fallen off the tank, but it had not caused a problem and tests had showed it did not strike the shuttle.

"The tank performed magnificently despite having several thousand repairs," he said.

During the 11-day flight, Atlantis will deliver goods to the International Space Station.

Source : www.news.com.au

T. Rex Was Slow-Turning Plodder, Study Suggests

Tyrannosaurus rex's fearsome reputation has taken another knock, with new research suggesting it was a slow-turning plodder.

The so-called king of dinosaurs has been buffeted in recent years by accusations of being a scavenger and a slowpoke.

Now a U.S. team suggests that T. rex also weighed considerably more than some experts had believed, took up to two seconds to turn 45 degrees, and is unlikely to have exceeded speeds of 25 miles (40 kilometers) an hour. (Related story: "Tyrannosaurus Rex Was a Slowpoke" [February 22, 2002].)

The study, led by biomechanics expert John Hutchinson while at Stanford University in California, is reported in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Building on previous work into the dino's biomechanics, the new findings challenge the perception that T. Rex was an athletic super-predator capable of running down fast, agile dinosaurs.

The team used a computer-modeling system to calculate the weight of a fossil specimen from the U.S. and then to estimate its running speed and turning ability, which has never been done before.

That fossil, an average-size adult, weighed between six and eight tons, and some individuals may have been as heavy as ten tons, the researchers said.

The team found the animal, hampered by a long tail and that heavy body, would have taken one to two seconds to make a quarter turn—far slower than a human.

"We now know that a T. rex would have been front-heavy, turned slowly, and could manage no more than a leisurely jog," Hutchinson, the lead study author, said.

Different Kind of Walk

Previous work by Hutchinson indicated that T. rex reached top speeds of between 10 and 25 miles (16 and 40 kilometers) an hour.

But the new study further undermines the popular notion that T. rex could reach speeds of around 45 miles an hour (72 kilometers an hour), as often depicted in movies.

Previous estimates that T. Rex weighed three to four tons were based only on the dinosaur's fossil bones, Hutchinson pointed out. But the new prediction involved over 30 different computer models.

"The method that we applied, creating a kind of computer sculpture of the body of a T. rex, takes into account the whole anatomy," he said.

Previous investigations into the biomechanics of dinosaurs have also often been based on living animals such as elephants, the research team added.

But the new research suggests T. rex walked very differently than the mammals, which use vertical, pillar-like legs. For the dinosaur to maintain its center of mass over its feet it would have needed to keep its legs bent, the team suggested.

The research team adds that its study has little bearing on the issue of whether T. rex was a scavenger or a predator.

It's a "false debate," with most experts now agreeing that the animal was both, Hutchinson said.

"If you look at living animals, pretty much anything that eats meat is both a predator and a scavenger," he added. "There's really no convincing evidence that says it was only a scavenger."

Slow Prey

Paul Barrett is a dinosaur researcher at London's Natural History Museum who was not involved with the study. He says the new research does appear to undermine the idea of T. rex as a super-predator.

"It suggests that T. rex is basically a lot slower and more lumbering than a lot of the recent views on it have been," he commented.

However, "most of the animals that T. rex would have been hunting were also large and pretty slow moving and not particularly agile. So although it wouldn't have been a particular speedy predator, that might not have been a big disadvantage," Barrett said.

"Whether or not it was running after its prey at high speeds, it would still have been pretty awesome, I think." Hutchinson's team agrees, saying its weight and speed findings may also apply to other large dinosaurs such as Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, which T. rex is known to have eaten.

"These were also big clunky animals that clearly weren't running around at 50 miles [80 kilometers] an hour," Hutchinson said. "And why would [T. rex] need to turn quickly if it was preying on other big, relatively slow things?"

Smaller two-legged dinosaurs would probably have been able to outrun T. rex, however.

"T. rex probably didn't eat those, unless it got lucky and caught one off guard," Hutchinson said.

The environment during T. rex's day was also very different from today, Hutchinson added, and probably one where animals didn't need to be built for speed.

"I think there's a bias imposed by looking at living mammals in the Serengeti and elsewhere on open grasslands where they have a lot of space," he said.

"When T. rex lived there probably weren't a lot of huge open spaces to be charging around in at massive speeds."

Source : news.nationalgeographic.com

Easy does it with Asustek's 'Eee PC'

Asustek and Intel introduced a new type of notebook at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The Eee PC 701 (the 'E's stand for easy) portable has a 7-inch display, weighs less than 2 pounds and is built primarily for Internet use. It will run on "full desktop mode" with Windows XP or Linux, or an "easy" mode. It's similar to Palm's new Foleo device and is reported to cost around $200.

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Source : news.com.com

Solid-state RAM ready to replace disks

Flash memory-based solid-state disks are on course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, if the evidence of this year's Computex tradeshow is to be trusted.

Laptops with solid-state disks are plentiful at Computex in Taiwan, an event where the world's most important PC manufacturers and component makers meet buyers from around the world, that makes a good gauge of the direction of the industry.

Solid-state disks are lighter and quieter than hard drives. Flash-memory disks use less power and are sturdier than hard drives. They are in use in Toshiba's Dynabook SS RX1 and Palm's Foleo.

The transition to solid-state disks is being accelerated by fast price drops in the flash market. An 8 Gbyte chip that cost around £6 at the end of 2006 currently costs about £4 on the spot market. That's a big drop in six months.

SanDisk launched its first SSD (solid-state disk), a 32 Gbyte model, at January's CES tradeshow. A mere six months later at Computex SanDisk is showing a 64 Gbyte model. The company says much higher-capacity drives are possible today but will be too expensive, so it's increasing the capacity of its drives while keeping them at what it considers the sweet-spot of price and storage space.

Like SSDs from competitors, the SanDisk drives are offered as drop-in replacements for 1.8in and 2.5in hard-disk drives and so can be offered by system makers without the need for any modifications. As SSDs become more common the company believes smaller form-factor drives will be used in machines specifically produced for solid-state storage.

"The old technology of the hard disk is going to go away from the mobile PC market and be replaced by [solid state] media," said Doreet Oren, director of product marketing at SanDisk's computing solutions division in Israel.

Some analysts agree. In a report issued in May, iSuppli said it expects 24 million laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2009 - about 60 percent of the anticipated market - will have flash storage, versus less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2006.

Also on show at Computex is a wide range of solid-state disks intended for the industrial sector. Such drives are targeted at military and aviation applications and began replacing other storage methods several years before their entry into the PC market, thanks to the willingness of such customers to pay higher prices.

Apacer Technology is demonstrating a 128 Gbyte industrial SSD that can replace a 2.5in hard drive and operate at temperatures between -40º and 85º Celsius. It will be available in the fourth quarter of this year, and a second version with double the data read speed of 200 Mbit/s will be available in early 2008.

Alongside it was a flash-based Raid (redundant array of independent, or inexpensive, disks) drive which has two Compact Flash card slots. The capacity depends on the cards used.

It's not only in the SSD arena that storage advances are on show at Computex.

Toshiba has the latest in its line of 1.8in hard-disk drives, a model that can store 100 Gbyte, on show. The drive can be fitted into portable media devices, such as the iPod or ultra portable PCs. Toshiba is also using Computex to unveil its first HD DVD rewriter drive for laptop computers. A single-layer HD DVD-RW disc can store up to 20 Gbyte of information, which is just over four times the capacity of an equivalent DVD.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has its 1 Tbyte drive that was unveiled at CES and new at the show is a 250 Gbyte 2.5in drive for laptop computers. The 5K250 includes drive-level encryption and has 56 percent more storage space than its predecessor, the 160GB 5K160.

Source : www.techworld.com

Atlantis ready for first shuttle flight

After a three-month delay, Atlantis is ready to blast off Friday on the first space shuttle mission of the year as Nasa presses on with efforts to finish the International Space Station.

Atlantis was originally scheduled to launch in March, but a freak hail storm damaged the shuttle's massive external fuel tank as the orbiter stood on its Florida launch pad, forcing Nasa to bring it back to its hangar for repairs.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began Tuesday the countdown for Friday's launch, scheduled for 19:38 pm (2338 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast.

Nasa officials said the shuttle was in tip-top shape, while forecasts gave a 70 percent chance of favourable weather as winds were expected to nudge clouds away to give Atlantis an open sky for the launch.

The seven shuttle astronauts - all American men - arrived in Cape Canaveral Monday evening from their base at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, as they prepare for the 21st shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

"All our systems right now are in great shape - we're tracking no constraints that are show stoppers," Nasa test director Steve Payne told a news briefing on Tuesday.

"Teams are ready and everybody's eager to launch - we're looking forward to a successful assembly mission," he said.

If a technical glitch or nasty weather force a delay, Nasa has until June 12 to launch the shuttle, but Kathy Winters, the launch weather officer, was optimistic on Wednesday.

There was a slight risk of thunderstorms in the area, but they should blow further west and clear by launch time on Friday, she said.

After June 12, Nasa would have to wait a few more days to blast off to allow the launch of a military satellite from the Cape Canaveral military base. Nasa and the Air Force share the same radars to track shuttle and rocket launches.

Atlantis will be the fifth shuttle mission since the Columbia tragedy of February 2003, when the orbiter disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, killing its seven astronauts.

The shuttle returned to space in July 2005 with a Discovery mission focused on making space flight safer. A second safety mission in July last year proved successful, paving the way for the resumption of ISS assembly missions.

After that, Nasa launched two complex construction missions in September and December that the space agency hailed as major successes.

During their 11-day mission, the Atlantis astronauts will install a new, 16-tonne truss segment on the ISS and deliver a third set of solar panels as well as batteries for the orbiting laboratory.

Three spacewalks lasting six and a half hours each are planned on the fourth, sixth and eighth days of the mission.

NASA plans at least 13 shuttle mission to finish the 100-billion-dollar station by 2010, when the US space agency retires its three-shuttle fleet.

The delay of the Atlantis launch forced Nasa to cut back its 2007 shuttle flight program from five to four launches.

After Endeavour and Discovery shuttle missions in August and October, Atlantis will fly back to space in December to deliver Europe's Columbus laboratory, which will be attached to the ISS.

The mission flying Friday is led by Commander Frederick Sturckow, a marine colonel, who will be joined in the cockpit by co-pilot Lee Archambault, an air force colonel.

The crew includes mission specialists James Reilly, Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson and John Olivas.

The seventh passenger, Clayton Anderson, will stay behind at the ISS while Atlantis brings back to Earth flight engineer Sunita Williams, who has been working in the space station since December.




Source : www.iol.co.za

Atlantis ready for first shuttle flight

After a three-month delay, Atlantis is ready to blast off Friday on the first space shuttle mission of the year as Nasa presses on with efforts to finish the International Space Station.

Atlantis was originally scheduled to launch in March, but a freak hail storm damaged the shuttle's massive external fuel tank as the orbiter stood on its Florida launch pad, forcing Nasa to bring it back to its hangar for repairs.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began Tuesday the countdown for Friday's launch, scheduled for 19:38 pm (2338 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast.

Nasa officials said the shuttle was in tip-top shape, while forecasts gave a 70 percent chance of favourable weather as winds were expected to nudge clouds away to give Atlantis an open sky for the launch.

The seven shuttle astronauts - all American men - arrived in Cape Canaveral Monday evening from their base at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, as they prepare for the 21st shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

"All our systems right now are in great shape - we're tracking no constraints that are show stoppers," Nasa test director Steve Payne told a news briefing on Tuesday.

"Teams are ready and everybody's eager to launch - we're looking forward to a successful assembly mission," he said.

If a technical glitch or nasty weather force a delay, Nasa has until June 12 to launch the shuttle, but Kathy Winters, the launch weather officer, was optimistic on Wednesday.

There was a slight risk of thunderstorms in the area, but they should blow further west and clear by launch time on Friday, she said.

After June 12, Nasa would have to wait a few more days to blast off to allow the launch of a military satellite from the Cape Canaveral military base. Nasa and the Air Force share the same radars to track shuttle and rocket launches.

Atlantis will be the fifth shuttle mission since the Columbia tragedy of February 2003, when the orbiter disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, killing its seven astronauts.

The shuttle returned to space in July 2005 with a Discovery mission focused on making space flight safer. A second safety mission in July last year proved successful, paving the way for the resumption of ISS assembly missions.

After that, Nasa launched two complex construction missions in September and December that the space agency hailed as major successes.

During their 11-day mission, the Atlantis astronauts will install a new, 16-tonne truss segment on the ISS and deliver a third set of solar panels as well as batteries for the orbiting laboratory.

Three spacewalks lasting six and a half hours each are planned on the fourth, sixth and eighth days of the mission.

NASA plans at least 13 shuttle mission to finish the 100-billion-dollar station by 2010, when the US space agency retires its three-shuttle fleet.

The delay of the Atlantis launch forced Nasa to cut back its 2007 shuttle flight program from five to four launches.

After Endeavour and Discovery shuttle missions in August and October, Atlantis will fly back to space in December to deliver Europe's Columbus laboratory, which will be attached to the ISS.

The mission flying Friday is led by Commander Frederick Sturckow, a marine colonel, who will be joined in the cockpit by co-pilot Lee Archambault, an air force colonel.

The crew includes mission specialists James Reilly, Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson and John Olivas.

The seventh passenger, Clayton Anderson, will stay behind at the ISS while Atlantis brings back to Earth flight engineer Sunita Williams, who has been working in the space station since December.




Source : www.iol.co.za

Welcome to iPod-compatible ‘Lala’ land

With all the current debate ebbing and flowing between the when and ifs of whether all digital music downloads on Apple’s iTunes Store will ever be delivered completely free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection, it’s always good to know that other imaginative industry types are hard at work looking for genuine ways to boost the online music service.

More pointedly, amusingly named Lala.com, a California-based music start-up Web site has this week unveiled its plans to introduce an online music service that’s not only compatible with the iPod player and iTunes but will also offer free (that’s ‘free’) full online song playback in order to better tempt prospective consumers into actually purchasing while perusing.

Lala’s initial service will be tied in with artists signed to Warner Music, and it will offer up single song tracks and full albums to the consumer, which will arrive without (that’s ‘without’) DRM protection and will be fully compatible with Apple’s iPod. In actuality, the new download service will only be compatible with the iPod player – no alternative hardware – in a move Lala hopes will prevent illegal distribution seeing as DRM has been removed.

Although currently restricted to Warner Music artists, Reuters reports that Lala is apparently in talks with the other major music companies (Sony BMG, EMI, and Vivendi Universal) to bring them onboard with the service.

In an interview with Reuters, Lala founder Bill Nguyen revealed that he predicts the service to lose some $40 million USD in the first two years of service, outlining that free-play licensing fees could rise as high as $160 million USD during that period. He also suggested that Lala’s audience is expected to consist of 70 percent “freeloaders,” merely visiting to listen to tracks, while “30 percent will be buying music.”

With significant financial backing from Bain Capitol and Ignition Corp., Lala’s service is free to use (beyond actual purchases) and will not bombard consumers with any advertising. The songs listed in Lala’s catalogue, available for visitors to listen to (for free), will be subject to end-user restriction in that consumers will only be able to download content directly to their iPod players, not their computers.

Source : tech.monstersandcritics.com

Scientists Move Closer to Turning Skin Cells Into Tissues

In a surprising advance that sidesteps the ethical debates surrounding stem cell biology, researchers have come much closer to a major goal of regenerative medicine, the conversion of a patient’s cells into specialized tissues that might replace those lost to disease.

The advance is an easy-to-use technique for reprogramming a skin cell of a mouse back to the embryonic state. Embryonic cells can be induced in the laboratory to develop into many of the body’s major tissues.

If the technique can be adapted to human cells, it would let scientists use a patient’s skin cell to generate new heart, liver or kidney cells that might be transplantable and would not be rejected by the patient’s immune system.

Previously, the only way scientists knew they were likely to get such cells is by nuclear transfer, the insertion of an adult cell’s nucleus into an egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The egg somehow reprograms the nucleus back to embryonic state.

The new technique, developed by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, depends on inserting just four genes into a skin cell. These accomplish the same reprogramming task as the egg, or at least one very similar.

The technique is much easier to apply than nuclear transfer, does not involve the expensive and controversial use of human eggs, and should avoid all or almost all of the ethical criticism directed at the use of embryonic stem cells.

“From the point of view of moving biomedicine and regenerative medicine faster, this is about as big a deal as you could imagine,” said Irving Weissman, a leading stem cell biologist at Stanford University.

David Scadden, a stem cell biologist at the Harvard Medical School, said the finding that cells could be reprogrammed with simple biochemical techniques “is truly extraordinary and frankly something most assumed would take a decade to work out.”

The new technique seems likely to be welcomed by many who have opposed human embryonic stem cell research. It “raises no serious moral problem, because it creates embryonic-like stem cells without creating, harming or destroying human lives at any stage,” said Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman on stem cell issues for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In themselves, embryonic stem cells “have no moral status,” and the bishops’ objections to embryonic stem cell research rest solely on the fact that human embryos must be harmed or destroyed to obtain them, he said.

Ronald Green, an ethicist at Dartmouth College, said it would be “very hard for people to say that what is created here is a nascent form of human life that should be protected.” The new technique, if adaptable to human cells, “will be one way this debate could end,” he said.

Ever since the creation of Dolly, the first cloned mammal, scientists have sought to lay hands on the mysterious chemicals with which an egg will reprogram a mature cell nucleus injected into it and set the cell on the same path of embryonic development as when egg and sperm combine.

ears of patient research have identified many of the genes that are active in the embryonic cell and maintain its pluripotency, or ability to morph into many different tissues. Last year Dr. Yamanaka and his colleague Kazutoshi Takahashi, both at Kyoto University, published a remarkable report relating how they had guessed at 24 genes that seemed responsible for maintaining pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells.

When they inserted all 24 genes into mouse skin cells, the cells showed signs of pluripotency. The Kyoto team then subtracted genes one by one until they had a set of four genes that were essential. The genes are inserted into viruses that infect the cell and become active as the virus replicates. The skin cell’s own copies of these genes are repressed since they would interfere with its function. “We were very surprised” that just four genes are sufficient to reprogram the skin cells, Dr. Yamanaka said.

Dr. Yamanaka’s report riveted the attention of biologists elsewhere. Two teams set out to repeat and extend his findings, one led by Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute and the other by Kathrin Plath of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Konrad Hochedlinger of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Yamanaka, too, set about refining his work.

In articles being published in Nature and a new journal, Cell-Stem Cell, the three teams show that injection of the four genes identified by Dr. Yamanaka can make mouse cells revert to cells that are indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells. Dr. Yamanaka’s report of last year showed that only some properties of embryonic stem cells were attained.

This clear confirmation of Dr. Yamanaka’s recipe is exciting to researchers because it throws open to study the key process of multicellular organisms, that of committing cells to a variety of different roles, even though all carry the same genetic information.

Recent studies have shown that the chromatin, the complex protein material that clads the DNA in chromosomes, is not passive packaging material but highly dynamic. It contains systems of switches that close down large suites of genes but allow others to be active, depending on the role each cell is assigned to perform.

Dr. Yamanaka’s four genes evidently reset the switch settings appropriate for a skin cell to ones that specify an embryonic stem cell. The technique is easy to use and “should revolutionize the field since every small lab can work on reprogramming,” said Alexander Meissner, a co-author of Dr. Jaenisch’s report.

An immediate issue is whether the technique can be reinvented for human cells. One problem is that the mice have to be interbred. Another is that the cells must be infected with the gene-carrying virus, which is not ideal for cells to be used in therapy. A third issue is that two of the genes in the recipe can cause cancer. Indeed 20 percent of Dr. Yamanaka’s mice died of the disease. Nonetheless, several biologists expressed confidence that all these difficulties will be sidestepped somehow.

“The technical problems seem approachable — I don’t see anyone running into a brick wall,” said Owen Witte, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In a Web cast about the research, Dr. Jaenisch predicted that the problems of adapting the technique to human cells will be solvable but he did not know when.

If a human version of Dr. Yamanaka’s recipe is developed, one important research use, Dr. Weissman said, will be to reprogram diseased cells from patients so as to study the molecular basis of how their disease develops.

Beyond that is the hope of generating cells for therapy. Researchers have learned how to make embryonic cells in the laboratory develop into neurons, heart muscle cells and other tissues. In principle these might be injected into a patient to replace or supplement the cells of the diseased tissue, without fear of immune rejection. No one really knows if the new cells would succumb to the same disease process, or if they would be well behaved, given that they developed in a laboratory dish without recapitulating the exact succession of environments they would have experienced in the embryo.

Still, repairing the body with its own cells should in principle be a superior form of medicine to the surgeon’s knife and the oncologists’ poisons.

But the first fruit of the new technique will be in figuring out how cells work.

This and other methods will lead to an explosion of information that will “open the door for understanding how cells program and re-program their fate,” Dr. Scadden predicted. If and when applicable to human cells, he said, the four-gene approach “will have profound implications for new biology, regenerative medicine and will change the ethical debate around stem cells.”

Source : www.nytimes.com

Scientists find 24 species in Suriname

PARAMARIBO Suriname - A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.

The expedition was sponsored by two mining companies hoping to excavate the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and it was unknown how the findings would affect their plans.

Scientists discovered the species during a 2005 expedition led by the U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International in rainforests and swamps about 80 miles southeast of Paramaribo, the capital of the South American country, organization spokesman Tom Cohen said.

Among the species found were the atelopus frog, which has distinctive purple markings; six types of fish; 12 dung beetles, and one ant species, he said.

The scientists called for better conservation management in the unprotected, state-owned areas, where hunting and small-scale illegal mining is common.

The study was financed by Suriname Aluminum Company LLC and BHP Billiton Maatschappij Suriname. Suriname Aluminum, which has a government concession to explore gold in the area, will include the data in its environmental assessment study, said Haydi Berrenstein, a Conservation International official in Suriname, which borders Brazil, Guyana and French Guiana.

About 80 percent of Suriname is covered with dense rainforest. Thousands of Brazilians and Surinamese are believed to work in illegal gold mining, creating mercury pollution that has threatened the health of Amerindians and Maroons in Suriname's interior.

Source : news.yahoo.com

Texas leads carbon emissions

WASHINGTON - America may spew more greenhouse gases than any other country, but some states are astonishingly more prolific polluters than others — and it's not always the ones you might expect.

The Associated Press analyzed state-by-state emissions of carbon dioxide from 2003, the latest U.S. Energy Department numbers available. The review shows startling differences in states' contribution to climate change.

The biggest reason? The burning of high-carbon coal to produce cheap electricity.

_Wyoming's coal-fired power plants produce more carbon dioxide in just eight hours than the power generators of more populous Vermont do in a year.

Texas, the leader in emitting this greenhouse gas, cranks out more than the next two biggest producers combined, California and Pennsylvania, which together have twice Texas' population.

_In sparsely populated Alaska, the carbon dioxide produced per person by all the flying and driving is six times the per capita amount generated by travelers in New York state.

"There's no question that some states have made choices to be greener than others," said former top Energy Department official Joseph Romm, author of the new book "Hell and High Water" and executive director of a nonprofit energy conservation group.

The disparity in carbon dioxide emissions is one of the reasons there is no strong national effort to reduce global warming gases, some experts say. National emissions dipped ever so slightly last year, but that was mostly because of mild weather, according to the Energy Department.

"Some states are benefiting from both cheap electricity while polluting the planet and make all the rest of us suffer the consequences of global warming," said Frank O'Donnell, director of the Washington environmental group Clean Air Watch. "I don't think that's fair at all."

He noted that the states putting out the most carbon dioxide are doing the least to control it, except for California.

Several federal and state officials say it's unfair and nonsensical to examine individual states' contribution to what is a global problem.

"If the atmosphere could talk it wouldn't say, 'Kudos to California, not so good to Wyoming'," said assistant energy secretary Alexander "Andy" Karsner. "It would say, 'Stop sending me emissions.'"

Some coal-burning states note that they are providing electricity to customers beyond their borders, including Californians. Wyoming is the largest exporter of energy to other states, Gov. Dave Freudenthal told The Associated Press.

He said two-thirds of the state's carbon footprint "is a consequence of energy that is developed to feed the rest of the national economy. That doesn't mean that somehow then it's good carbon, I'm just saying that's why those numbers come out the way are," Freudenthal said.

And the massive carbon dioxide-spewing and power-gobbling refineries of Texas and Louisiana fuel an oil-hungry nation, whose residents whine when gasoline prices rise.

However, some of the disparities are stunning.

On a per-person basis, Wyoming spews more carbon dioxide than any other state or any other country: 276,000 pounds of it per capita a year, thanks to burning coal, which provides nearly all of the state's electrical power.

Yet, just next door to the west, Idaho emits the least carbon dioxide per person, less than 23,000 pounds a year. Idaho forbids coal power plants. It relies mostly on non-polluting hydroelectric power from its rivers.

Texas, where coal barely edges out cleaner natural gas as the top power source, belches almost 1 1/2 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide yearly. That's more than every nation in the world except six: the United States, China, Russia, Japan, India and Germany.

Of course, Texas is a very populous state. North Dakota isn't, but its power plants crank out 68 percent more carbon dioxide than New Jersey, which has 13 times North Dakota's residents.

And while Californians have cut their per-person carbon dioxide emissions by 11 percent from 1990 to 2003, Nebraskans have increased their per capita emissions by 16 percent over the same time frame.

Officials in Wyoming, North Dakota and Alaska say numbers in their states are skewed because of their small populations. But Vermont, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia are similar in size and have one-12th the per-capita emissions of Wyoming.

A lot of it comes down to King Coal.

Burning coal accounts for half of America's electricity. And coal produces more carbon dioxide than any other commonly used U.S. fuel source. The states that rely the most on coal — Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia, Indiana — generally produce the most carbon dioxide pollution per person, but also have the cheapest electric rates.

States that shun coal — Vermont, Idaho, California, Rhode Island — and turn to nuclear, hydroelectric and natural gas, produce the least carbon dioxide but often at higher costs for consumers.

It's unfair to pin all the blame on the coal-using states, said Washington lawyer Jeffrey Holmstead, who as an attorney at Bracewell Giuliani represents coal-intensive utilities and refineries. Holmstead is the former Bush administration air pollution regulator who ruled that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant, a decision that was overturned recently by the U.S Supreme Court.

"Coal-fired generation is the most economical, least expensive way to produce power almost anywhere in the world," he said. He argued that outlawing such plants would have little overall impact globally; however, the U.S. has long been the leading global source of carbon emissions.

Instead of trying to wean themselves from coal, Texas government officials went out of their way to encourage the state's biggest utility, TXU Corp., to plan for 11 new coal-burning power plants that would have produced even more carbon dioxide. The strategy collapsed when an investor group buying TXU cut a deal with environmentalists to drop plans to build most of the coal plants.

The Texas state agency charged with monitoring the environment declined to comment on carbon dioxide emissions. Spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said the gas "is not a regulated pollutant." Frank Maisano, a lobbyist and spokesman for Bracewell Giuliani, which also has offices in Texas, defended the state saying, "these net exporters of energy are always going to produce more carbon dioxide."

Emissions from generating electricity account for the largest chunk of U.S. greenhouse gases, nearly 40 percent. Transportation emissions are close behind, contributing about one-third of U.S. production of carbon dioxide. States with mass transit and cities, such as New York, come out cleaner than those with wide expanses that rely solely on cars, trucks and airplanes, like Alaska.

Alaska, which stands out for its carbon dioxide production, also stands out as one of the early victims of climate change. Its glaciers are melting, its permafrost thawing, and coastal and island villages will soon be swallowed by the sea. Alaska ranked No. 1 in per-person emissions for transportation, which includes driving, flying, shipping and rail traffic.

That's not the state's fault, says Tom Chapple, director of the state Division of Air Quality. Its sheer expanse requires a lot of air travel. And Anchorage ranked No. 2 nationally in air cargo traffic.

For people who want to reduce their household emissions, or their "carbon footprint," the state where they live really does matter.

After seeing Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gregg Cawley used one of the many calculators available online to determine his "carbon footprint." The University of Wyoming professor lives in a small one-bedroom apartment and drives a moderately efficient Subaru, so he figured he contributes less to global warming than the average American.

But the calculations showed otherwise. They suggested Cawley produces more carbon dioxide than most Americans. Even if he reduced his energy consumption, the numbers would hardly budge. "My God," he thought, "what do I have to do to my lifestyle to change this?"

Then he changed his home state in the equation. He took out Wyoming and plugged in Washington state.

"I came in way low. I said, 'That's the problem. I live in the wrong damn state.'"

That simple hypothetical change of address cut his personal emissions by nearly three tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Source : news.yahoo.com

Nations clash over elephant ivory sale

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A decision to be made this weekend on whether to allow the sale of 60 tons of elephant ivory is exposing rifts between nongovernment agencies dedicated to defending the diversity of plants and animals.

Just as the NGOs are split on the ivory trade, so are African nations themselves — reflecting the growing complexity of conserving the Earth's shrinking natural habitats.

The 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, begins a 12-day conference on Sunday. It will consider amending its lists of trade restrictions on a range of species, from the American bobcat to the European eel and several South American cacti.

The decision on allowing three southern African countries to sell part of their ivory stocks will fall at a crucial committee meeting on Saturday.

It will set the stage for a larger high-profile issue later in the conference — whether to relax or tighten the 1989 restrictions on trading ivory.

It also will be the prelude to a broad people versus animals discussion: Whether a treaty aimed at rescuing vulnerable species from extinction should also consider the livelihood of people who live with them.

Will Travers, president of the Species Survival Network which represents about 80 nongovernment organizations, said CITES should not be diverted from its original purpose. "There are any number of agreements and treaties that deal with the human condition," he said, but "precious few that focus on species."

Susan Lieberman, of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, disagreed. "The only way to deal with conservation is to build our programs around local communities."

CITES meets every two to three years to review its lists of more than 7,000 animals and 32,000 plants whose trade is regulated.

The opening salvo comes in the Standing Committee where South Africa, Botswana and Namibia seek to go ahead with a one-time ivory sale to Japan, which has an ancient tradition of sculpting intricate scenes from curving tusks.

The ivory would come from stocks gathered from elephants that have died naturally over the last 18 years. The countries pledged to earmark the revenue for further conservation.

The sale was conditionally approved in 2002 but was held up until an adequate monitoring system against poaching could be put in place, and until Japan was capable of controlling its use and preventing its re-export.

Kenya and Mali, which want to tighten the trade ban, reluctantly agree to the sale if those conditions are met. Central and West African states, where most of the illegal trade originates, have generally supported the overall ban, but their position was unclear on the one-time auction.

Since 2002, tons of illicit ivory have been seized, mostly in Asia.

Japanese authorities captured 2.8 tons of contraband ivory last August and arrested two people, said the CITES secretariat, in a report for Saturday's committee meeting.

Other illegal consignments have been found in Hong Kong and Taiwan, usually concealed in hidden compartments in shipping containers.

Conservationists see the seizures as evidence of organized crime.

"With the illegal trade increasing, it is ludicrous that they are considering relaxing the ban," said Rachel Noble, of the British-based Environmental Investigation Agency. The monitoring system, she said, "is full of holes."

WWF, however, thinks the sale should go ahead as long as the proper controls are in place. "You can't keep moving the goal posts," said Lieberman, director of WWF's Global Species Program.

Over the next two weeks, the conference will vote on other proposals to grant export quotas to Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe where elephant populations have rebounded, and to let them conduct limited trade in elephant hides, leather goods and live animals.

A competing proposal from Kenya and Mali would eliminate some exceptions to the ivory ban for 20 years.

In the last two years, their proposal says, nearly 40 tons of illegal ivory have been intercepted, implying a slaughter of up to 19,000 elephants. It said the legal trade in souvenirs and trophies "provides an opportunity for laundering large quantities of illegal ivory."

Source : news.yahoo.com